equality now

The Other Soldiers

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“There’s nothing wrong with a little agitation for what’s right or what’s fair.”

–   John Lewis

I dedicate this post to the distinguished Congressman John Lewis, may he rest in peace.

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In 1967, the late U.S. Representative, John Lewis had his skull fractured because he was marching for the right to vote. He endured much more violence as one of the original Freedom Riders, being beaten at times with baseball bats, lead pipes, and chains – all for the right to be treated equally. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, was arrested/jailed or beaten 29 times before he was assassinated because he was asking for black Americans to be treated with the same respect as white Americans. How many people have died to satisfy the frail egos of white men?

These are just two prominent examples. These are two of the greatest of American men. They did more for this country than I could ever do. I would need several lifetimes to scratch the surface of their contribution to this democracy.

So many people have sacrificed their lives, their livelihoods, and their bodies to attain that famed American dream, and to make it possible for others. To make life easier for those after you, or those around you, is the most beautiful thing.

Right now, that dream is a nightmare for the men, women, and children locked up in cages at the U.S. Border. All they wanted was a chance at the dream–to live your life on your own accord. This is really all anyone wants.  

How many people have had to march, petition, protest or demand equal treatment to white men? Racism is not dead, it’s paved in our roads, and sidewalks of our streets. It requires constant vigilance by those who would truly make this country great, men like John Lewis and Dr. King, women like Maya Angelou and Angela Davis to name a few among so many others.

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American history in the last century and a half has seen a lot of change. So many freedoms that were hard fought and won by soldiers who fought in the name of democracy. We have cemeteries full of men who died on actual battlefields to serve this country, but I am not going to talk about them right now. This is about the other soldiers.

The other soldiers I am talking about have also died for the freedoms of their fellow Americans. They did not carry guns, though they’ve been shot at. They did not storm beaches, hills, or bunkers, but they fought hard to gain ground. They are the men and women who have taken to our streets to march for what’s right. They are the ones who have conquered the American hearts, defeated unjust laws, and helped to move our country closer to that dream for which it was intended. They are still fighting today.

We should honor these warriors who stood up and who stand up when they see something wrong. Where would we be now if they did not say or do something about it? They have fought the good fight with their words, their arts, their movements, and this land is better for it. The fight is not over.

We should have a parade for these soldiers of justice,  like Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in United States history. He was assassinated. Then there’s soldiers like Matthew Shepherd, a 21 year old who was savagely beaten and tied to a barbed wire fence and left to die with a fractured skull – because he was gay. Rebecca Wight, a lesbian shot to death on the Appalachian trail, then there’s Brandon Teena, a transgender man raped and murdered in Nebraska, or Amanda Milan, a 25 year old transgender woman stabbed in the neck in New York City. These are only a tiny fraction of the names of people who have been murdered for having the courage to live their lives in the face of so much adversity.

I have never had to worry about living my life by anyone else’s leave. I have never had to apologize for being me. Those who have had to fight stigma day in and day out for who they are attracted to, who they love, the color of their skin or who they pray to are far braver than me. I salute you.

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I take no pride in the color of my skin. Being white is not an achievement. I did not study hard, or put in the hours working and making sacrifices in my life to get to the goal of having a lighter pigment. Nothing in our lives as white men came harder because of the way our society views white men. Too often, we allow the oppression, or are dismissive of it. White noise is the white silence in the background, the sound of our indifference.   

Now, I am not ashamed of being white, because I can’t be ashamed of something I had nothing to do with creating. I had no more choice in being white than I did in being born on earth. But the skin I was born in has benefits, and those benefits have come at the cost of others’ rights. I acknowledge this fact.   

You don’t need to hide behind robes and ridiculous pointy hoods to be a white supremacist. You can wear a uniform with a badge. You can wear business suits, ties too long, and an orange vanity mask. You can wear the title of congressman, senator, businessman, or president.

White supremacy isn’t just about keeping people of color down, it’s also about keeping down, or away, those who don’t fit into the very narrow mold set by those who hold the power. As if America were a theme park and the Democracy Mountain ride had a sign that said: “You must be this tall, this white, and this heterosexual to ride.”

Most corporations, businesses, and establishments in America are white owned, white operated and white managed. Of the 500 corporations that make up the Fortune 500, there are only four black CEOs.  

If I were black, yes, I would be proud. What black people have had to endure in this country is an unimaginable burden to bear. If I were gay, I would be proud, for anyone in the LGBTQ community has had to endure a vastly tougher road than I have. If I was Native American, or Jewish, or Asian American or any other person historically marginalized, I would be proud.

People are dying all over America from COVID 19, and we have people who would rather fight for the flags and statues of dead traitors who thought it was their right to own other people. Honoring the confederacy is just the racist’s wet dream to keep alive the hate it stood for. I say tear them all down.

Let’s make new statues to those other soldiers who fought and those who continue to fight today to make this country truly great. Honor those who still march. Protesting, or as the late John Lewis might say, making “good trouble,” is what America is all about. Standing up when you see something wrong, and saying something about it. It’s about letting your voice be heard, no matter what your voice sounds like or where it comes from.

I hope that one day we won’t need these other soldiers. I hope the time comes when we don’t need to have marches for rights, because they will already be had by all. America is only great because of the people in it, and it’s up to us to make sure that is true for everyone.

On White Privilege

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“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am a white man and I have white privilege. I didn’t ask for it but I got it. All of us who are white have it. It is our inheritance bought by slavery. 

Racism is a monster, a hideous creature that thrives in darkness, and it has been hiding under all our beds our whole lives. To ignore racism or deny its existence is to feed it the way a child sneaks scraps under the table to the dog.

White privilege is not about being born wealthy, but then again, it is. It’s not about your money, your station, or your opportunity. It’s not about you.

It’s a different kind of wealth, one we all got whether we wanted it or not – the wealth of establishment.

The dictionary defines the word, establishment as such:

  1. a constituted order or system.
  2. the existing power structure in society; the dominant groups in society and their customs or institutions; institutional authority
  3. the dominant group in a field of endeavor, organization[1]

Establishment sets the table and the rules. Here in America, those rules were written by white men for white men.

I’ve heard people say they know underprivileged white people, so they take issue with the term, ‘white privilege.’ Yes, there are poor white people. Poverty is a terrible thing, a crushing force that presses people down. Historically, the poverty felt by people who are not white is disproportionately worse than those who are white. Poverty is like a dirt road in the rain. It is a hard slog that can stretch on for a lifetime. However, for anyone in America not born a heterosexual white male in the last several hundred years, that dirt road in the rain is set at a steeper incline.  

Yes, there are white people wrongfully killed by police–police brutality is a major issue, but white people don’t have to fear the police because of the fact that they are white.

Nobody chooses the color of their skin, but centuries of racial domination have left white people’s skin unfettered by the manacles of history. White people benefited from slavery then, and we benefit from it today.  

White heterosexual men don’t have to march for equal rights.

White heterosexual men don’t have to ask the Supreme Court for permission to marry, or to vote, or to attend a good school, or any school. Straight white men have never been excluded from joining the armed forces, the police force, or the court.

You’ve never heard someone introduced as, “The first white heterosexual male…” head coach, quarterback, NFL owner, commissioner, broadcaster, journalist, doctor, CEO, pilot, police chief, lawyer, judge, astronaut, dean, congressman, senator, mayor, governor, or president. No one has ever had to say those words.

When we are indifferent to inequality and the injustice caused by racism, we let that monster grow. It is up to us on our own whether we feed it. I say drag that monster out from under the bed and throw it into the light, watch it shrink under the sun and you’ll see that it’s really just a cockroach and that’s the best it could ever be.

White privilege is real. It is the byproduct of a terrible and evil thing. Just acknowledge it. None of us can ever understand the pain it has caused, but we can try. We can listen.

When we listen our hearts will stir and then we can do something about it. We can change the establishment. We can vote.

[1] Definition provided by Dictionary.com

Where It Hurts

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America – June 4, 2020

“A riot is the language of the unheard.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I generally write fantasy fiction, but right now, it is difficult to escape reality when reality is so desperately in need of escaping.

About forty-six years ago, when I was three or four years old, my mother tells that if I’d fallen, scraped my knee, or otherwise came to her crying she would ask me, “Where’d you get hurt?” Rather than show her whichever part of my body was in pain, I would take her by the hand and walk her to the exact location I was in when the injury occurred.

I grew up in Colorado Springs, when I was in second or third grade; I sat with a girl, A.B., at my homeroom desk. I still remember her eyes and her smile. She was beautiful. We were good friends, as good as two kids no older than six or seven can be. We drew each other hearts, giggled a lot, and shared sweet smiles. I was a little white boy with buckteeth and she was a little black girl with good penmanship. We were children who shared innocent affections, until one day the teacher separated us. Other white kids in the class had started talking. They called her names. They called me names too. 

I didn’t know what their words meant so that night, I asked my father. He was well into his bourbon, his eyes glassy with that liquid haze. When I asked him what the ugliest word in the English language meant he snapped to, and sat up straight. I was in trouble. My father said, “You ever say that word again and I’ll knock your fucking head off.”

Moments later, he asked me where I’d heard the word, and I told him about A.B. and what my classmates were saying. My father, a Vietnam vet who’d come from an affluent family back east told me that it didn’t matter what color someone’s skin was because, “We love who we love.”

As long as I live, I will never forget that moment. As long as I live, I wish I could forget this moment, the one we are all in now.

Compared to other countries the United States of America is a toddler. It is the child of a time in history, when people landed on these shores fleeing tyranny. Yet, in our quest to be free, we became tyrants ourselves when we wiped out the people and culture that was here before us. Then we became enslavers, and mortgaged our humanity for free labor. The unbelievable world of pain brought by that may never be healed entirely. The tyranny of that pain has endured through centuries, and it is not yet dead.  

We cannot continue to overlook or undervalue the fact that white Americans have benefited from hundreds of years of oppression.

As a white man in America today, I can interact with the police without fearing for my life. I can shop anywhere without fear of being seen as suspicious. I can vote without issue, and do so many things I have taken for granted because I am not suffocated by racism. I can simply live my life, so many cannot.

I had a collapsed lung once about twenty years ago. It was awful. It happened spontaneously and subtly at first. After a few minutes, I started to feel difficulty breathing and after a while, I drove to the ER because I could not breathe fully. I have no idea what it’s like to be a person of color of any kind, but I imagine it is something like having only one functioning lung. It’s hard to do things when you cannot get enough air. It is hard to live that way.

White privilege is the air we breathe.

Our forefathers destroyed the native peoples of this land and purchased their own luxury with the blood and sweat of black men, women, and children. That happened and we cannot erase it. In doing this, they created a caste system that has endured in the halls of academia, our government, our courts, and our minds. What is happening today in America is a part of that story. Regardless of whether or not we were alive when it began is irrelevant. We are alive now.

America is a beautiful country, but we have scars. We have open wounds, and they will not heal until we let them. We need compassion. Though we cannot change our past, we can grow beyond it. We have to acknowledge it, the damage it has done and continues to do. We have to stop hiding our scars, or pretending they are not there. Let them be known, understand them. We cannot change our skin, all we can do is live in it.

If America’s mother were to ask you, “Where’d you get hurt?” take her hand and walk her to the sidewalk Trayvon Martin died on, the spot in Charleston, where the grass felt Walter Scott’s body fall, take her to Cleveland, where Tamir Rice was gunned down, or the street in St. Anthony, Minnesota where Philando Castille was shot in front of his son and girlfriend, take her to the shoulder of the Loop 101 in Phoenix, where Dion Johnson was shot in his car, take her to the street in Minneapolis where George Floyd gasped for air, and begged for his life before he died.

Take her to all these places, and then take her to the many, many, many more. Show her where they all died and say, “That’s where I’m hurting.”